YOUNG, MALE AND VOTING REFORM

Once, anti-establishment British youth disillusioned with mainstream politics headed left. Now many - especially young men are turning right. What is it about Nigel Farage's party that attracts them?

- Gaby Hinsliff

JOSH IS 24 YEARS OLD AND WORKS AS A CARER. It's not J easy work, but he prefers it to his old job in a supermarket: most of his clients are elderly and "just want someone there with them, because they're lonely". In his spare time Josh used to be into boxing. But lately he's got into politics instead.

Like many of his gen Z contemporaries, he's thoroughly disillusioned with the mainstream kind. "The two parties that have been in power for 100-plus years have done nothing. The economy's a mess," he scoffs. But if he sounds like the kind of anti-establishment young person who once rallied to the radical left, Josh's frustration has taken him in another direction. An ardent Brexiter in his teens, who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, he now belongs to → Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

We meet in the bar of the Athena theatre in Leicester, alongside about 900 people who have paid £15 ($19) and dodged a noisy counterprotest to see their hero in the flesh at Reform's East Midlands rally. Their reward is nearly three hours of speakers attacking small boat crossings, "woke" ideology and grooming gangs raping and trafficking young girls.

"If you don't want to respect our history, our heritage, our way of life, our laws, then clear off," barks Reform MP Lee Anderson, as burly men ferry pints from the bar. Andrea Jenkyns, the ex-Tory MP who defected to Reform, says her seven-year-old wants to join, and implores parents to sign their adult children up. Throughout the night, someone keeps heckling "Listen to Tommy Robinson!" (the jailed far-right thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, whom Farage has consistently frozen out).